Close to Home (DI Adam Fawley #1)(77)

He follows her across the car park to an area fenced off with metal security panels. There are signs all along it saying CONSTRUCTION SITE: KEEP OUT.

Somer pushes open the gate and pulls it to behind them with a clang. ‘I asked the site manager to attend, Sarge. He’s over there, in the Portakabin.’

The man has obviously been keeping watch for them, because he comes down the steps as they approach. He has a rugby-player’s ears and a shaved head.

‘DS Quinn?’ he says, extending a hand. ‘Martin Heston. Your colleague here asked me for a schedule of the work we’ve been doing for the last two weeks.’

Full marks to Somer, thinks Quinn, as Heston hands him a worksheet.

‘As you can see, we’ve been demolishing the old footbridge and laying new track for one of the lines.’

‘And most of this has been going on at night?’

‘Has to, mate. You can’t do it with the trains running.’

‘What about during the day – is there anyone around then?’

Heston gestures about him. ‘Not when we’re doing overnight work. No point paying people to sit on their arses. There are deliveries sometimes, and we have someone on site then, but that’s about it.’

‘What about security?’

‘Don’t need it, mate. All the kit’s locked behind barbed wire on the other side of the track. We had to bring it in by train and that’s the only way anyone’s going to get it out.’

‘So if a member of the public came here during the day, they wouldn’t necessarily be seen?’

He considers. ‘I suppose you might spot them from the other side, but there’s a lot of trees in the way. When the level crossing was still open, there were people here all hours going across to the allotments. They used to park here and take their stuff over, but now they have to go via Walton Well. That’s – ’

‘I know where it is.’

Quinn looks around. There’s a pile of rusty garden equipment a few yards away. Wheelbarrows, hoes, empty bags of compost, rusting spades, broken terracotta pots.

He opens out the schedule. ‘So what was being done on the evening of the nineteenth?’

Heston points a thumb. ‘We finished taking down the old bridge and worked on the footings for the new one.’

‘Wait, are you telling me you’ve been digging bloody great holes in an area where any Tom, Dick or Harry can just walk straight in?’

Heston bridles. ‘I can assure you we follow approved Health and Safety practices at all times – this area is completely cordoned off.’

Quinn looks back the way they came. There’s fencing all right, but it’s only loose panels, and he reckons he could force his way in. If he had to. If he had a good enough reason.

He turns back to Heston. ‘Can you show me? Exactly what you were doing?’

They walk over to the new footbridge, where the pillars are beginning to rise above the ground.

‘How deep were the foundations?’

‘We’d planned for three metres,’ says Heston, ‘but when we started digging it just kept filling up with water. Port Meadow’s a flood plain, so we knew it was going to be an issue, but it was a lot worse than we’d expected. We ended up going down more like six.’

‘That’s what you were doing that Tuesday night?’

‘Right.’

‘And if there’d been something in the bottom of that hole – something as small as a child – you’d definitely have noticed? Even in the dark?’

Heston blanches. He has granddaughters. ‘Jesus – do you really think someone – ? But the answer’s yes – we’d have noticed. We had arc lights and we were pumping the water out the whole time, so we could see what was down there. No way my lads would have missed something like that.’

‘Right,’ says Quinn, folding up the schedule and handing it back. ‘Two steps forward, three steps back.’

But Somer is still looking at Heston. Who isn’t making eye contact.

‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’ she says. ‘Something that wasn’t to do with “your lads”.’

Heston flushes. ‘It’s way off – I just can’t see it happening – ’

‘But?’

He eyes her for a moment, then points beyond the foundations. ‘When we took the old bridge down we heaped the waste over there – you can see where the pile was. Concrete, bricks, ballast – you name it. Anyway, the contractor collected it all that night – we weren’t allowed to do it during the day. Health and – ’

‘ – Safety. Right,’ says Quinn. ‘And which contractor was it?’

‘Firm in Swindon. Mercers.’

‘So let me get this straight,’ says Quinn. ‘There was a pile of rubble over there that afternoon – the nineteenth. But that night this firm of yours – ’

‘Nothing to do with me, mate. I don’t decide who gets hired.’

‘OK, I get it. Anyway, they came that night and took the waste away.’

‘Yes, but if you’re suggesting someone could have buried something in there and the guy they had on the grabber didn’t spot it, you’re way off. It’s not the bloody movies, that sort of thing just doesn’t happen.’